Activision wants to make sure you know just how popular the latest version of Call of Duty really is.

Call of Duty: Black Ops, released in early November, has a bigger audience than Jay Leno, David Letterman, Conan O'Brien, and other late-night talk show hosts combined can muster in an entire week (the week of December 6, to be specific), according to Activision.

In addition, the company said that more players are enjoying Black Ops than watched the series finale of "Lost." Not even the average viewership for the 2010 World Series could match Black Ops' audience. (It should be noted that this year's matchup between the San Francisco Giants and the Texas Rangers had rather lackluster numbers for the World Series.) And if Activision could put all Black Ops players into a single state, it would be the third-largest in the United States.

When it comes to actual online gaming, Black Ops continues to impress.

Activision reported last week that Black Ops players have spent more than 600 million hours playing the game online, and average about 87 minutes per day fragging each other.

Last week, the game publisher reported that Black Ops has generated over $1 billion in revenue. It hit that figure in just six weeks, easily outpacing the two months it took for the game's predecessor, Modern Warfare 2, to reach that milestone.

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Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has covered everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Besides his work with CNET, Don's work has been featured in a variety of other publications including PC World and a host of Ziff-Davis publications.
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